


upheavedown

by madeinessos



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26091415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Nile meets with Quynh in Val d’Argent.
Relationships: Nile Freeman & Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	upheavedown

There’s a butterfly lounging on the bare soil of the window planter box. Indigo and grey wings; it matches the skies. Matches Nile’s stack of bracelets, too.

Actually, she can’t remember the last time she wore a bracelet. Probably the Christmas before her last tour when they visited Dad’s parents in New Orleans. She idly stirs sugar into her tea, admiring the soft clicking of the beads and charms. Souvenirs. Nile wanted to have something for herself from each job with the team. Or touchstones. Something to carry around with her, a reminder, a comfort of sorts, like her rose-gold crucifix from Mom. So, the bracelets. The first one is from London. Then one from Basra, another from Doha, this one’s from Seoul, that one from Harran, and others from Kano, from Zaragoza, and from Tunis.

Chicago comes to mind, but she squashes it before it settles there. Wishing. But not wishing. Wishing for a job to pop up there. But wishing for it to remain uninvolved, a clean cut. But also – no.

Nope. Nope, can’t do that whole dance right now. Now’s not the time for it.

Nile glances at the ceramic clock over the bakery counter. She looks at the door. Scans the fairly crowded room from her corner spot by the window: employees in aprons matching the teak and dark blue scheme of the shop; the customers in hats and coats and jumpers; the pink and red balloons; the flowers and heart plushies; the laughter. Outside the window’s no better: garlands of zinnias by the chocolatier, a wreathe of roses on the pharmacy, couples and friends strolling about.

Nile shrugs. She starts on her Sachertorte. Got to join in the spirit of Valentine’s and all that.

Halfway through the slice, Nile is patting her jacket pockets to double check that the burner phone isn’t with her anymore when a voice says, “You are nervous?”

A shadow has fallen over the small table.

The woman is wearing a red overcoat. Absurdly red. It cuts through the noise and the grey day like a blade of sunshine.

Keeping her voice measured, Nile says, “Quynh,” and raises her head to meet the woman’s eyes.

A small wave of nausea abruptly washes over her.

That feeling she gets when an elevator stops by a floor? That upheavedown? It’s there in Quynh’s eyes. Liquid-dark and bottomless. Too old. Much too old.

Nile holds Quynh’s gaze, and swallows thickly.

This is nothing, she’s dealt with this before. She felt it back in Andrei the Russian’s plane as she prodded her newly-healed arm and stole glances at Andy. She felt it from across the small dinner table in Goussainville when she realised that Andy was alive way before the Crusades. She felt it from across a shattered window in a London building, that quiet moment with the wind nipping her cheeks, that small moment, a few feet and thousands of years apart, but somehow manageable. Somehow bearable. So, yeah, Nile’s been learning how to cope with –

Quynh blinks slowly. Just as slowly she looks Nile up and down and up, that a phrase darts through Nile’s mind: peeled open.

“Miss Freeman,” she says, and in French, “won’t you invite me to sit with you?”

The tide recedes. Nile clears her throat.

“Yeah,” Nile replies in the same language. “Sure. Please, join me.”

“So kind of you to meet with me, Miss Freeman. Is it all right to call you Nile?”

Quynh’s voice flows. Crisp in some places, mild in others. She sounds like someone teaching in a speech class; either that, or like that ex-theatre chick back in the Afghanistan base. No traces, so far, of the jagged rage and searing pain and lurching disorientation in Nile’s dreams.

“That’s fine,” Nile replies, “call me Nile.”

Nile’s shamelessly staring now. She’s only seen Quynh’s likeness in the form of Joe’s sketches. Her dreams, well, they’re too vague and too brief image-wise to count. And now, here in the flesh, Nile finds that she can’t help but watch every one of Quynh’s movements.

A ghost of a smile is lurking on the corners of Quynh’s lips. With wide easy movements, she sets her stuff on the table – a smartphone, a cigarette case, and a small bowl of what looks like a scoop of vanilla ice cream doused in creamy coffee – before pulling back the chair with a light scraping sound, tossing back her flowing hair, and finally sitting.

Okay.

“Do you know,” Quynh says, “how many times I’ve been asked this month if I was a stage actor?”

“Um,” says Nile, thrown off balance. She takes a fortifying forkful of cake. “No.”

With another slow blink, Quynh taps her smartphone with a blunt, unpainted nail. “Speech has evolved greatly. Marvellous, really. You can imagine the education I’ve recently had.”

“So, how many times?” asks Nile. She chases her latest forkful with some whipped cream. “That you were mistaken for an actor?”

The ghost dissipates. “No, Nile.” Quynh switches to English. “I ask the questions.”

Nile sets her jaw. “And I have the answers you want, so.”

“Val d’Argent,” Quynh says thoughtfully, as though she hasn’t heard Nile. Her eyes flick to the window, past the bare planter box, past the rooftops, to the mountains skulking over the town. She continues, “I dreamt of you and Andromache here, talking at first light. It was always one of her favourite places. Do you know how many times I rode the haft of her axe in that abandoned mine?”

Nile almost chokes on her cake. “Holy shit,” she mutters, swallowing thickly. Shifts on her chair. Who goes around saying stuff like that to random people? “Jesus.”

Quynh leans back. Satisfaction flits across her unsmiling face. “Did something happen to Andromache?”

Nile raises her cup to her lips. She keeps her expression bland. At ease. She focuses on the cream and cake still sliding down her throat.

Quynh nods. “I see. Something has, hasn’t it? And why do you not want me to find her? Why do you keep blocking my path?”

Nile keeps silent. She can’t just say _You felt crazy in my dreams. It’s reasonably alarming. And Andy’s stopped healing. I have to make sure. Just to make sure._

Quynh makes a tutting sound. “What an honest face you have, child. I like it. Well made, too.” She picks up her spoon and sinks it into her small bowl. “Have you tried their affogato, by the by?”

Affogato.

Drowned.

The air contracts. Then expands. Nile’s lungs suck in a breath. Everything in the room seems to slow down.

Nile tracks the spoon’s progress from the ice cream drowned in coffee up, up, and she’s waiting for it to disappear into Quynh’s mouth when it stops right in front of Nile’s own face.

Nile clamps a hand around Quynh’s proffered arm. Her stack of bracelets clack.

Quynh just blinks slowly, doesn’t attempt to free her arm from Nile’s grip.

“Now, don’t cause a scene,” Quynh murmurs. The ghost of a smile returns to the corners of her bare lips. Her other hand lightly, carefully, settles on Nile’s wrist. Her fingertip sluices its way between the beads and charms, and finds Nile’s skin. “You’ll find a better scene in my mobile phone. Go on. My hands are suitably occupied, as you can see. Now, do we look like proper lovebirds to these patrons?”

Breathing hard, Nile grabs the phone.

Unlocked. She flips past the lock screen. The photos app is open.

Nile’s gut clenches and punches up to her throat. “Booker! Shit! Jesus Christ – shitshit –”

“Shhh,” Quynh whispers. Her nails bite down on Nile’s thundering pulse, burrowed among the beads and charms.

She yanks her arm away from Quynh and glances around the shop. Nobody’s paying them mind. The air is ripe with love songs.

Quynh has withdrawn the spoon, and is leisurely licking at it. “Gelato and espresso,” she says conversationally. “Delicious.”

A drop or two of it has fallen on Nile’s cake. She feels vaguely sick. Upheavedown.

“No use asking what you want,” Nile says, curt. “But you just proved me right. Proved my instinct about this whole situation right.”

“Oh, but you can still ask.” Quynh makes another expansive gesture with her spoon and leans an elbow on the table. She moves like she owns every square inch of space, like she can’t get enough of it. “You can still ask. Come, indulge me with small talk. Stop thinking about jumping through that window and think of poor Booker, instead.”

Nile flicks through the phone. Another burner. Her thumb hovers over the message app; the team has an emergency number. And she’s almost sure that this phone is being tracked by Quynh herself.

“Okay.” Nile crosses her arms over the table. A slight tremor passes through her hand; she makes a fist. Her breathing has been returning to normal. “All right, so tell me. What do you want?”

The corners of Quynh’s eyes crease up in approval. “To talk with you. I want that. To finish these treats. To smoke. Whilst I talk with you.”

Nile stares. “What, really?”

Quynh nods at Nile’s crossed arms, under which is the phone with message sent to Copley’s secure line.

This woman.

“What better way to pass the time?” Quynh tells her. “I want to enjoy some food. To taste it. I want warmth in my chest. I want to talk to someone who knows of me. I miss talking, and I want to learn the contemporary expressions. Tell me of your first day after your first death. Tell me –”

“Are you gonna ask about Andy again? You know I won’t answer so save it.”

“Andy.” Quynh says it like she’s testing a new flavour of gelato. Then she smiles for the first time. It’s small and bottomless. “I was going to ask, do you think Andromache would enjoy affogato? I’ve a mind to take her out to dine. Later on, of course. She used to love that.”

_fin_


End file.
